If you’re a small business, you want every dollar you spend on advertising to work toward increasing your sales. Unfortunately, as John Wanamaker said many years ago, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; I just don’t know which half.” And today, with so many advertising options, it’s hard to know what works and what doesn’t. And there are so many options with offline and online marketing options.

Here’s an idea: Why not focus for a minute on getting current and potential customers to spend more money with your business? Fortunately, there is a way to make your money increase your sales with almost no risk. It’s proven to work for other businesses, and I can almost guarantee it will work for your business.

What is this great invention?

Start by understanding the incredible shift that has occurred in the mindset of consumers. Consumers are buying mobile phones at an incredible rate. Androids, droids, iPhones, BlackBerrys, and so on. There are more than 100 million of these mobile devices that access the Internet. And many consumers are so attached to their mobile phones that it’s like they’ve become a new part of their bodies.

Of course, companies with big budgets spent a small fortune to find out what consumers are doing with these phones. And what they learned is that there has been and continues to be a major shift in the way people search for information and buy products. In fact, the latest studies from Nielsen and Yahoo reveal that consumers plan to use their mobile devices as much or more than their desktop to shop for products.

Large companies joined the new way of buying consumers and had to make a decision. Should they modify their current website or add a new mobile website to their business? Once again, the research found that consumers who are on their mobile phone tend to be time-constrained and don’t have the time to search a site for the information they need right now.

Additionally, consumers were frustrated by the small screen size of their mobile devices, as it was a great challenge to navigate a website. Also, the sites were so small that it was impossible to read the text. Keeping consumers happy, gaining a competitive advantage, and increasing sales are the goals of these companies, so they added a mobile-friendly site. A mobile site that connected with the needs of consumers and the limitations of the mobile web and mobile phones.

The results: More than a billion dollars in sales from mobile sites were reported last year.

What does this mean for your business?

It means you can learn from these companies and duplicate what they’re doing to get consumers to spend more money with you. If attracting new customers, gaining a competitive advantage, and adding more sales is important to you, then your next step is an obvious one. Add a mobile-friendly site to your business plan today. It’s better than spending more money on advertising, and it’s like putting your business in the pockets of consumers 24/7.

Best of all, by using what these great companies have learned about mobile website design, the price to build your mobile-friendly site will be considerably lower. What do you think the price is for a professionally designed, results-oriented mobile site?